Abus 5-Pin Impressioning Practice Lock (Level 2)

Introduction

Impressioning precisely and rapidly requires building strong fundamentals through practice. The right choice of practice lock is crucial to ensure to steady progress, avoid frustration and develop skills that are relevant to the locks you'll encounter in the field.

The ABUS - 5 Pin Cylinder is a perfect "Level 2" lock, designed to refine and perfect your impressionning skills.

This lock is also available in our Impressioning Pack.

• Rounded Pins
  Rounded pins are designed to thwart impressioning: they leave less marks, and if too much torque is applied, the risk of breaking your key increases.
  
  Impressionning locks with rounded pins requires careful blank preparation, a methodological technique to notice subtle marks and changes, and correct torque application to extract marks without breaking your blank.
  
  
• Custom Bitting
  The Lock401 "Level 2" locks have challenging bitting, designed to test not only your reading skills, but also your patience. If a key is taking a long time, it's easy to get frustrated and abandon diligent technique - by filing more or forcing torque.
  
  Improving confidence in your technique and patience is important - in the field, you'll encounter deep pins close to the plug entrance, which can result in snapped blanks when stress or frustration arise.
  
  
• Speed Hacks
  In order to prevent stuck keys, locks cannot be bitted with too much contrast - 5/0/5 for example. As such, if you encounter a 5-depth pin, you can infer that the neighbouring pins will be bitted to at least 2-depth.
  
  Lock manufacturers use determined pin-lengths. If you know these lengths, when you see a mark, you can confidently file the exact depth.
  
  These 'speed hacks' will allow you to dramatically increase your speed and reduce the chance of snapped keys from over-working your blanks.
  
  

In a nutshell

Below is an overview of the ABUS Level 2 Lock: